All the surprising ways your favorite roles were introduced on the page.
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How do you create a memorable female character?
The CAMERA follows the bottle to MARGO CHANNING, wrote Mankiewicz in his stage directions.
An attractive, strong face.
Its always fun to get a peek behind that curtain, but why settle for just a peek?
She is a little woman.
There is a curious style, a great sense of high voltage about her.
She is dressed in black house pajamas and black high-heeled pumps.
Her skin is very pale, and she is wearing dark glasses.
We get a look at her now for the first time.
For all her chic thinness she has an almost breakfast-cereal air of health.
Her mouth is large, her nose upturned.
Her sunglasses blot out her eyes.
She could be anywhere from sixteen to thirty.
As it happens she is two months short of nineteen.
Her name (as we will soon discover) is HOLLY GOLIGHTLY.
One of the best screen couples has got to be Nick and Nora Charles fromThe Thin Man.
There is a warm understanding relationship between them.
They are really crazy about each other, but undemonstrative and humorous in their companionship.
Pretty in a flawed, accessible way.
She doesnt stop the party when she walks in, but youd like to get to know her.
Her vulnerable quality masks a strength even she doesnt know exists.
Her eyes peer out through a wild tangle of hair like those of a cornered animal.
Defiant and intense, but skittering around looking for escape at the same time.
Down one cheek is a long scar, from just below the eye to her upper lip.
Her VOICE is a low and chilling monotone.
How about a few other screen women you wouldnt want to cross?
This isnt punk fashion.
This is someone saying, Stay the fuck away from me.
This mass of woman looks as if she is one with the furniture if not the entire apartment.
She is putting on make-up with intense concentration and appreciation, applying lipstick and eye make-up.
As the camera slowly pulls back from the closeup we see that we have been looking into a mirror.
She is standing before the full-length mirror in her bedroom doing her make-up.
She overdoes it in the style of the time: rosebud mouth and so forth.
As the film progresses her make-up will be refined until, at the end, there is none.
She is a lesbian and wants people to know it.
Can You Guess This Famous Female Character?
We’ll give you the way she’s introduced in the screenplay.
You tell us who she is.
Still, its striking to see how often and how thoroughly the female characters physical attributes are dissected.
(Theres evena Twitter accountdevoted to it.)
Her big bare feet slap on the hard wood floor.
She moves to the cool rockabilly beat as she paces like a tiger putting on her clothes.
Outside her apartment she hears a Honk Honk.
Naomi licks her lips; shes incredibly, painfully hot.
She watches, only her eyes moving.
She is lithe as a cat, with a long neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts.
And she is devastatingly beautiful for a girl with a tail.
In human age she would be 18.
Her name is NEYTIRI (nay-Tee-ree).
You might expect some of those attributes to work their way into Lonergans description of Lisa.
Instead, he simply wrote this:
On LISA COHEN, just 17.
Not the best-looking girl in her class but definitely in the top five.
The exact calibration of these female characters beauty begs a reference to Goldilocks: Theyre hot, but nottoohot.
Shes 21 years old.
Shes very pretty although not necessarily in an obvious way.
She could be attractive if she put any effort into it, which doesnt occur to her.
Take Whitney Houstons besieged singer inThe Bodyguard:
RACHEL MARRON finally rises from the sofa.
Its a bit of a shock to see that she is only about thirty years old.
Not beautiful, not ugly.
Unique only in that she is immediately interesting.
She has long blonde hair and a refined, classically beautiful face.
She is not knockout gorgeous like Roxy; there is a smoky kind of sensuousness about her.
Her name is NOMI MALONE.
She looks from a distance like a kid.
She stands along the Interstate, outlines in the shadows of the setting sun.
Shes got a big American Tourister in front of her with a sign on it that says: Vegas.
The suitcase looks like its been dropped from a plane or something.
Shes wearing a baseball cap, a worn black leather jacket, torn jeans, and time-kissed cowboy boots.
Shes got her thumb out.
Should we move on fromShowgirlstoMeryl Streep?
MIRANDA PRIESTLY, in all her glory.
She is stunning, perfectly put together, a white Hermes scarf around her neck.
MIRANDAS look is so distinctive you’re able to spot her a mile away.
She is unlike any other beautiful woman, singularly MIRANDA.
Right now shes singin and dancin up a storm, seemingly without benefit of training in singin or dancin.
And this description of Streeps character inIts Complicatedis a total distillation of writer-director Nancy Meyers and her heroines.
JANE is mid-fifties and has embraced that fact.
Everything about this womans appearance screams solid.
First up,Pretty Woman:
VIVIAN turns and stares at herself in a grainy, cracked bedroom mirror.
She is twenty years old and a prostitute.
Make-up applied to give her a hard, older look doesnt quite succeed.
Shed be innocently beautiful without it.
She is wearing tiny shorts, a tight tube top, thigh high boots.
She stares at herself, not really liking what she sees.
Dark liquid eyes, a cynical mouth, slender expressive fingers.
And then, of course, theres her unconventionally costumed legal crusader inErin Brockovich:
How to describe her?
A beauty queen would come to mind which, in fact, she was.
Some of the most endearing character descriptions are of girls navigating the path to adulthood.
Her hair is a mess and her knees are dark with bruises.
A small scar is visible on her cheek.
Shes a combination of a little death rocker and an 80s version of Edward Goreys little girls.
She has a couple of expensive cameras around her neck and is already taking photographs of the moving men.
Lydia is cool, Lydia is sullen, Lydia is her fathers daughter by his first marriage.
Lydia is usually about half-pissed off.
But underneath… we like her a lot.
Take Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonios estranged wife inThe Abyss:
A slender woman in her early thirties.
Shes attractive, if a bit hardened, dressed conservatively in a skirt and jacket.
Project Engineer for Deepcore.
Shes a pain in the ass, but youll like her.
This is EVELYN CARNAHAN.
Were going to fall in love with her.
But not every screenplay feels the need to declaim quite so much when introducing the love interest.
Sometimes, the description is so beguiling that you start to fall in love yourself.
Who wouldnt lean forward at this introduction of Susan Sarandons character inBull Durham?
ANNIE SAVOY, mid 30s, touches up her face.
Very pretty, knowing, outwardly confident.
She is in her middle twenties and her name is FRAN KUBELIK.
She is also an individualist she wears a carnation in her lapel, which is strictly against regulations.
As the elevator loads, she greets the passengers cheerfully.
She is in her early thirties.
She holds a large bath-towel around her very appetizing torso, down to about two inches above her knees.
She wears no stockings, no nothing.
On her feet a pair of high-heeled bedroom slippers with pom-poms.
On her left ankle a gold anklet.
At this moment, however, that look does not hurt.
Clearly this woman was caught mid-something for the apparent emergency.
She is DORIS MANN, about 60, formerly beautiful and more than somewhat currently.
She was an enormous star in the 50s and 60s and bears that mark.
She is currently very upset, theatrically so.
People watch her as she moves by moving aside to avoid impact.
Doris Mann is very upset.
Perhaps she has lost a shoe.
you could listen to their discussion here.
